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THE LESSONS OP OUR NATIONAL CONFLICT. 



ADDRESS 



TO 



THE ALUMNI OF YALE COLLEGE, 



AT THEIR ANNUAL MEETING, 



.JULY 24, 1861. 



By JULIAN M/ STURTEVANT, 

PRESIDENT OF ILLINOIS COLLEGE. 



PRINTED BY REQUEST OF THE ALUMNI. 



*4* 



NEW HAVEN: 
PRINTED BY THOMAS J. STAFFORD. 

1861. 



THE LESSONS OF OUR NATIONAL CONFLICT. 



ADDRESS 



TO 



THE ALUMNI OF YALE COLLEGE, 



AT THEIR ANNUAL MEETING, 



.JULY 24, 1861. 



v JULIAN M. STURTEVANT, 



PRESIDENT OF ILLINOIS COLLEGE. 



x 



PRINTED BY BEQUEST OP THE ALTJMNL 
♦♦* 



6 NEW HAVEN : 

PRINTED BY THOMAS J. STAFFORD. 



1861. 



ADDRESS. 



Fathers and Brethren of the Alumni : 

The distinguished scholar and divine who last addressed 
you, on an occasion like this, found his fitting theme in the 
history of our venerable Alma Mater, as recorded in her 
Triennial Catalogue. The public mind was then in a mood 
to sympathise with a review of our peaceful past, and to 
enjoy an effort so tranquil and scholarly to gather up those 
suggestions of wisdom and hope which may be derived from 
our former experience, to guide and encourage our future. 
Blessed peace ! How bright is its sunshine, as in memory we 
contrast it with the stern and solemn realities which now 
surround us. The present hour seems to me to demand a 
very different theme. "We are now called to learn the lessons 
of adversity : we must now find strength for an hour of con- 
flict ; fortitude to endure and hope to sustain and cheer us 
in darkness and gloom. It is fit that we remember that all 
the nations that have ever achieved anything worthy of the 
grateful remembrance of mankind, have passed through their 
seasons of national adversity, and that the lessons of those 
seasons have been even more important to their development, 
their education, and their greatness, than those derived from 
seasons of prosperity. It is in adversity, in conflict, in the 
times of national trial and calamity, that a nation's fallow- 
ground is broken up, and the seeds of future greatness are sown 



and rooted in the soil. Its times of prosperity are only liar- 
vest seasons, which would yield nothing worthy of the reaper's 
sickle without previous " sowing in tears." What would 
Greece have been without her Persian wars, her Marathon, 
Thermopylae, and Plataea? AVljat would England have been 
without her wars of the Roses, and the troubles and terrible 
conflicts of her great Revolution ? "Without these the English 
nation, English character, English freedom could never have 
been. While they lasted, how deep the gloom in which they 
shrouded the nation ! It was with our fathers in those strug- 
gles as it is with us to-day. Peace and prosperity seemed to 
them a bright and sunny dream of the past ; and as they 
peered into the thick mists which overhung them, they could 
no where discern any sure promise of their restoration to an 
afflicted nation. And yet how bright, how glorious a future 
was before them ! How full of freedom and happiness to 
their children and their children's children, and of blessings 
untold to the human race ! 

It becomes us, then, to take courage and hope. We are not 
the first nation that has seen an hour of darkness and gloom. 
We have no reason to suppose or to hope that we, more than 
other nations, can fulfill a great destiny without passing, like 
them, through a baptism of suffering. And if a great destiny 
is before us, as we have fondly hoped, we ought to expect to 
be prepared to enter on that promised land, bypassing through 
the Red Sea, the wilderness, and the Jordan. It ill becomes 
us, then, as soon as the shadow of a great calamity begins to 
fall upon us, to lose our courage and abandon our hope. This 
is an hour rather in which we need all our manhood — a hand 
to do with unfaltering energy all its duties, and an eye to 
discern all its lessons. 

It has therefore seemed to me that in no other way can we 
so fitly improve the present hour, as in endeavoring coolly to 
survey the passing scene, in order to glean up some of those 
suggestions of encouragement, warning and wisdom, which 
may give us strength for the present and manly preparation 
for the future. 

There are four vices which have been rapidly growing upon 



our American character, which our present adversity is obvi- 
ously fitted, and I hope intended by a merciful Providence, to 
correct and eradicate. They are a morbid philanthropy : an 
ostentatious and costly self-indulgence y a great lacJc of the 
spirit of loyal admiration and reverence for a strong and ener- 
getic government / and a disposition in our notions of national 
policy to substitute the will of majorities, instead of justice 
and the will of God. Either of these vices would be a source 
of great weakness and deformity to any nation ; and, all 
together, if allowed to grow unchecked and uncorrected, they 
could not fail to produce national disaster, debasement, degrada- 
tion, and ruin. Let me then respectfully invite your attention 
to the relation of our present national adversity to each of 
them. 

1. Much of our philanthropy is sickly, and the experiences 
through which we are passing will render it again vigorous 
and robust. 

"We have a notion widely prevalent, and arrogating to itself 
the claim that it is the only true development of the teachings 
of the law of God, that even defensive war is criminal, con- 
demned by the morality of the New Testament ; that a Christ- 
ian people has no defense against the exactions and oppressions 
of men of violence and blood, but argument and persuasion. 
We have a popular text-book on moral philosophy from the 
pen of one of the most venerated divines and distinguished 
educators of our country, which teaches and defends this 
doctrine. A distinguished philanthropist of our countr}', 
known in this and foreign lands, alike for the extent and 
varietyof his linguistic lore, and the fervor of his philanthropy, 
has proposed to put an end to war in Christendom, by obtain- 
ing from every man a solemn pledge never to bear arms, just 
as it is proposed to banish the vice of drunkenness from human 
society by obtaining from every individual a pledge never to 
drink any thing which has an intoxicating quality. Such a 
pledge of universal brotherhood has been signed by thousands 
of women, and some men. Many of us have been invited to 
sign it ; perhaps some of us have signed it. If we have not, I 
hardly think it probable we shall do so, just at the present time. 



6 

Many persons carry the same notion with them to the read- 
ing of the Bible. Many a tender-hearted enthusiast is quite 
shocked at the Psalms of David, and cannot understand how 
a good man can have been so vindictive. There are not a few 
of our reformers who are hurried into the conclusion, that the 
Old Testament cannot have been inspired of God because of 
its warlike spirit. They judge of the utterances of those 
glorious old warriors and prophets of the Lord in the light of 
the modern doctrines of non-resistance, and condemn them as 
vindictive and revengeful in spirit. 

This same notion is extended not only to war, but to the 
punishment of crime. Paul, in his good old robust view of 
things, spoke of the civil magistrate as " he that beareth the 
sword." But these modern interpreters of the morality of 
Paul's adored Master, would take away the sword from the 
magistrate, and represent the taking of human life as exceed- 
ing the powers which governments are competent to confer on 
their agents. They do not seem to perceive that such a denial 
undermines government itself, that it is a denial of its right to 
be ; for no government can sustain its own existence for a 
twelve month, when deprived of the power of life and death 
over its subjects. This morbid sympathy for the wicked is 
undermining the foundations of society itself; it is affecting 
disasterously the decisions of judges and the verdicts of jurors ; 
it is disqualifying the minds of millions to receive those 
doctrines of retributive justice, which lie at the foundation of 
all government, human and divine, of all social virtue, and of 
that very Christian religion, from which men profess to derive 
a morality from which the idea of retribution and penalty is 
excluded. 

It is not to be denied, that such green-sickness as this is be- 
coming quite seriously prevalent among the American people. 
It is the result of living too long and too much in the cool 
shade o<" prosperity, and will require no other treatment than 
exposure tor a time to the hot sunshine of national adversity. 
From such a change of regimen we expect robust, vigorous 
health to ensue, except in a few cases, in which the constitu- 
tion has been already fatally impaired. 



It is difficult to conceive of circumstances better fitted than 
our present to affect a cure of such a morbid condition of the 
national mind. What will these amiable philanthropists have 
us do in our present national trial ? What for our dear country ? 
What for social order, for freedom, for justice, for humanity, 
for mercy ? What can we do but defend all which is- precious 
in the cherished free institutions of our country by force of 
arms? In times like these it is easy to relearn a lesson, which 
has been taught again and again in the history of our mother 
England and her colonial offshoots, that no people can long 
enjoy freedom, unless they are willing to defend it with their 
blood. The whole history of liberty in the world teaches the 
same lesson. To refuse to bear arms in defense of a free and 
just government, to neglect to exert force for the defence of the 
innocent, the restraint of the disorderly, and the condign pun- 
ishment of crime, is for society to abdicate its highest function, 
and give over this world to the rule of anarchists and despots. 

I have not forgotten the blessed prophecies of the divine 
Word. There is to be a long reign of peace on earth. But it 
is not to be ushered in by leaving crime unpunished, and 
unoffending virtue unprotected, and giving up this present 
world to men of violence and blood, to tyrannize over it to 
their heart's content ; but by effecting such changes in the 
social, political and moral condition of the world, through the 
dissemination of freedom, instruction, and a pure Christian 
faith, as shall render a long reign of peace and justice possible. 
In the present state of the world it is not possible. Nor are 
we to expect those peaceful ages to be ushered in, till such a 
morbid philanthropy, as we have been remarking on, has been 
effectually exploded ; till men shall have so learned in the 
school of hard and bloody national experience the relations of 
retributive justice and penalty to all order, to all freedom, and 
to all government, that they can enjoy long peace and freedom 
without reproaching as blood-thirsty cut-throats, those ances- 
tors by whose bravery and prowess on the field of battle these 
blessings were purchased. God will never usher in that golden 
age of the future, till he has prepared mankind to honor and 
revere the men bv whose labors and sacrifices it shall have been 



8 

achieved ; till men shall be wise and strong enough, while in 
the full enjoyment of its holy tranquility, to read the Old 
Testament, the narratives of its glorious old heroes, the denun- 
ciations of its prophets, and the songs of its royal Psalmist, 
without having their philanthropy shocked. And till the 
world does so understand the subject of war and retributive 
justice, we may be sure it is not yet ready to beat its swords 
into ploughshares and its spears into pruning-hooks. 

2. But I must hasten to a second lesson of the times which 
is perhaps yet more striking and important. It will hardly 
be denied that our national character was becoming greatly 
weakened by the prevalence of a spirit of ostentatious and 
costly self-indulgence. Long- continued and unusual pros- 
perity has a terrible influence to enervate and unman a 
people. Costliness of living will often, in such circumstances, 
outrun the greatest prosperity. Men make more haste to 
spend in expensive magnificence than to acquire. That 
seemingly impossible combination of Sallust, " Luxuria atque 
avaritia" is presented before our eyes, not only as possible 
but as actual. In the same communities and in the same 
persons, the greed of gain goes in even yoke with the greed 
of costly self-indulgence. Men, and perhaps still more wo- 
men, learn to regard all things as necessaries of life, or at 
least of their delicate and favored lives, which the imagina- 
tion can dream of, or which money can purchase. While one 
such want remains ungratified, the era vino's of desire stimulate 
avarice to still more insatiable eagerness, till the voices of 
humanity, philanthropy, piety, and conscience, are all alike 
silenced or unheeded, amid the ceaseless clamors of these two 
hostile and yet twin vices. 

Of this tendency of great and long-continued prosperity, 
our country is beginning to afford a very alarming illustration. 
I trust I am no croaker; but a man may speak the truth 
without croaking. And it is a truth which challenges denial, 
that habits of extravagant costliness have grown upon the 
descendants of the selt':sacrificing frugal Pilgrims with very 
alarming rapidity. They are to such an extent drying np the 
fountains of our philanthropy, that we may look forward to 



the time as not distant, when the great centers of our wealth 
and population shall surpass even the capitals of the old 
world in accumulated masses of unfed, unclad, uninstructed 
and uncared for poverty. The lady who in the midst of a 
profusion of all the costly fabrics which can be procured from 
the spindles and looms of the civilized world, has "nothing 
to wear," will be sure to meet the appeals of humanity, com- 
passion and piety, with the plea that she has nothing to spare ; 
and the husband and the father will have nothing to spare- 
While such imaginations are more busy in devising the ways 
of spending money than avarice itself in procuring it, men 
become the worse than galley slaves of Mammon, that women 
may be no less the slaves of fashion and pleasure. 

In this country of ours this evil is more wide-spread and 
alarming than it ever has been in any other. It is not only 
true that our prosperity has been unprecedented, both in its 
greatness and in its continuance, that we have enjoyed a kind 
of millennium of money-making, but the resulting habits of 
extravagant costliness spread themselves over a wider surface 
than in any other country. In those countries in which 
society is largely aristocratic in its structure, custom for the 
most part confines such habits of extravagance to the upper 
classes. The middle and lower classes are in some degree 
protected from their influence by the proprieties of their rank. 
But with us the contagion is universal, and can be checked in 
no class by any other consideration than those of conscience 
and good taste ; and when these fail, it is without a limit. 
The wife or daughter of a plain American fanner cannot be 
dressed without the toilet of the Empress of the French. The 
democratic kitchen-maid emulates the costume of Queen 
Victoria and her daughters. 

It is not only true that such modes of living are wasting 
our substance and drying up the fountains of our charity and 
our liberality ; but they are in other respects enervating our 
national character. To persons and to communities long ac- 
customed to such self-indulgent luxury the voice of conscience 
speaks with little power; self-denial is a thing not to be 
thought of. A farmer said to a friend of mine, in the very 



10 

midst of the great political conflict of 1856, " I do not care 
who is President, I can raise as much wheat and sell it for as 
good a price under one as another." And that is the spirit 
towards which the American people were tending. It mat- 
tered not how our government was administered, whether the 
nation was honored or disgraced by the conduct of its rulers, 
whether justice or oppression were in the ascendency, provided 
only our gains and our pleasures were not interfered with. 
The merchant who could meet the expenses of his princely 
mansion, and all the costly gayeties of the season, enjoy his 
splendid summers at Saratoga and Newport, and, at the year's 
end, add a satisfactory number of thousands to his capital, 
thought it out of taste for him to be troubled about politics, 
and was more indignant at the fanaticism of those who 
troubled the public mind by talking of the wrongs done to 
four millions of slaves, than he could be at any instance of 
injustice which did not reach the gains of his counting-house 
nor the luxuries of his merchant-palace. To a people thus 
enervated by enslavement to their own imaginary wants, 
bravery, heroism become impossible and inconceivable. In 
these later years as I have listened to the stirring strains of 
our national air, I have felt the blush of shame tingling my 
cheek almost equally at the words " the home of the brave," 
as at the words " the land of the free." Both have sounded 
like a burlesque. We Americans of the present generation 
have had very little reason to sing of our bravery. 

There is great power in a season of national adversity, such as 
that through which we are passing, to correct these downward 
tendencies of our national character. Perhaps we have 
thought that we had nothing to spare ; but we are in the way 
of discovering how great was the delusion. At the trumpet 
call of our country's danger, we are summoned to place our 
entire fortunes at her disposal, and our own lives, and the 
lives of sons, husbands, and brothers. Ah ! surely we had 
much to spare. And the sweet voices of loved ones, of fathers 
and mothers that have gone, whisper in our ear to withhold 
nothing in this hour of our country's need. Our own love of 



11 

liberty, the liberty of ourselves, and our children, and our 
children's children, says, withhold nothing. 

Ah ! in these times we may hope to learn lessons of bravery 
and heroism, and become worthy to sing — 

— •' long may it wave 
O'er the land of the free and the home of the hrave." 

And in the midst of the sacrifices which we now make so 
freely for the land of our birth, and the guarantees of our 
liberties, we shall think of our past self-indulgent lives, and, 
like the penitent Peter, we shall go out and weep bitterly ; 
and we shall construct our future lives on a nobler and better 
principle. We shall train ourselves and train our children to 
habits of self-denial and self-sacrifice. And it may be hoped 
that by means of the discipline through which we are now 
passing, we shall become a people that will know how to enjoy 
prosperity without being corrupted and enervated by it — a 
people wise enough to possess all the unequaled resources of 
the good land which the Lord hath given us, and use them in 
furtherance of all the interests of freedom, humanity and 
universal civilization. Such a people we must become, self- 
denying, brave, heroic in the midst of prosperity, or we can 
never attain to the destiny which divine Providence seems to 
have marked out for us. The history of the human race in 
all its degradations and crimes presents nothing so revolting 
and shocking, as the conception of this nation with all the 
high and glorious lessons of its past, enjoying the exhaustless 
resources of North America, and yet using them in corrupting, 
enervating self-indulgence, and in the unbounded costliness of 
fashionable ostentation. If we are to become great as our 
hopes, we must find a corrective of these vicious tendencies. 
It is devoutly to be hoped we may at least partially find it in 
the stern discipline of the present hour. 

3. A third vicious tendency in American character, which I 
mentioned, is a lack of admiration and reverence for a strong, 
energetic, and benignant government. 

It is sad to observe how low the sentiment of reverence for 
established and rightful authority has fallen in our national 



12 

mind. We have begun to conclude that the glory of an 
American is not that his is a free, rightful, and benignant 
government, but that he is not governed at all ; that in this 
happy country every one does what is right in his own eyes. 
Instead of reverencing our own government for its strength, 
we have been inclined to glory in its weakness. We have 
been sufficiently confident of its durability, sufficiently in- 
clined, like the old Roman, to talk of the " Capitoli immobile 
saxum" But it has not been because we had any confidence 
in the strength of the government, or its power to overcome 
resistance should any ever be offered; but because we thought 
the government so benignant and so good, and the people 
withal so intelligent, that there was no danger that it ever 
would be resisted. In popular impression, in general estima- 
tion, we had no government. And when our present chief 
magistrate was forced to make his way to the national capital 
unattended and unknown, under the cover of the friendly 
darkness of the night, we were mortified indeed, but it did 
not arouse the nation, nor even the party which had elected 
him. It was not much worse than we expected, and we soon 
made up our minds to submit to the national indignity, and 
"go around Baltimore ! !" 

And this want of reverence for the authority of a strong 
government was producing disastrous effects on our whole 
national character. We were evidently in need of some 
vigorous discipline. The clement of reverence for rightful 
authority was slipping out of the national mind. Our young 
men were beginning to feci that all authority is despotism, 
all government tyranny, and all submission and obedience 
servility. Just in proportion as such views prevail among any 
people, they become incapable of virtue, or of anything that 
is truly groat and noble in character. That man or that 
woman into whose character the spirit of cheerful and rever- 
ential obedience to rightful authority does not enter as a 
predominating element, cannot be cither virtuous, or great, 
or noble, or lovely. Such a character is monstrous ; a nation 
of such characters is a nation of monsters, and would be 
loathed of men and abhorred of God. And those traits of 



1o 
O 

American character which have exposed us to the severest 
criticism from enlightened foreigners, have all sprung from 
this very vice. Any discipline, therefore, which tends to 
correct this vice, is evidently one which young America does 
greatly need. 

There is one peculiarity in our national history, which 
created almost a necessity, that we should run for a time 
into the vice of which I speak. Without an experience which 
as a nation we have not had, it was hardly possible either 
for the rest of the world to understand us, or for us to under- 
stand ourselves. Our government is in J part founded on a 
new discovery in political science, as truly original as the inven- 
tion of steam navigation, or the telegraph. Our constitution is 
called a confederation of States. That is nothing new under 
the sun. Confederations have been common from the days of 
the Grecian republics to our own times. But our confedera- 
tion is in a most important respect unlike all that have pre- 
ceded it. In a confederation of States properly so called, the 
central government has States, and States only, for subjects. 
It can command the individual only by commanding the 
State to which the individual owes allegiance. In our con- 
federation, if confederation it must be called, the central 
government is restricted, indeed, to a very limited number of 
interests ; but in respect to those interests, it is as truly 
national as the government of England or France. It never 
commands a State ; it has no power or right to do so ; it com- 
mands individuals only. It is therefore unlike any other con- 
federacy. It is unlike any other national government, be- 
cause, though it governs all the individuals of the entire na- 
tion, it governs them only in respect to certain limited and 
accurately defined interests, leaving them to be governed in 
all other respects by the several States, as though the central 
government did not exist. This, I say, is a new discovery, or, 
if you please to call it so, a new experiment in the science of 
government. 

De Tocqueville, in his work on American Democracy, has 
stated this point with so much clearness and force, that I 
cannot forbear quoting his words. He says : 



14 

" The human understanding more easily invents new things than new words, 
and we are thence constrained to employ a multitude of improper and inadequate 
expressions. Where several nations form a permanent league and establish a 
supreme authority, which although it has not the same influence over the mem- 
bers of the community as a national government, acts upon each of the confede- 
rate States in a body, this government which is so essentially different from all 
others, is denominated a Federal one. Another form of Society is afterwards 
discovered, in which several peoples are fused into one and the same nation with 
regard to certain common interests, although they remain distinct or at least 
only confederate with regard to all other concerns. In this case the central 
power acts directly upon those whom it governs, whom it rules, and whom it 
judges in the same manner as, but in a much more limited circle than a na- 
tional government. Here the term Federal government is clearly no longer ap- 
plicable to a state of things which must be styled an incomplete national gov- 
ernment. A form of government has been found out which is neither exactly 
national nor federal ; but no farther progress has been made, and the new word 
which will one day designate this novel invention does not yet exist." p. 138. 

This most important feature in our national constitution, is, 
in the strictest sense, a new discovery, a new invention. But 
if history proves anything, it proves that new discoveries in 
government are never made available for the benefit of man- 
kind, except through conflict and blood. It was appointed to 
the English nation, for example, to demonstrate that a king 
may reign while the people govern. She has nobly wrought 
out this problem in the sight of Europe and the world, and a 
noble step of progress it is in the science of government. 
But in working it out she has taken from one king his head, 
and from another his crown, and has sacrificed in civil con- 
flict what thousands of her people, and what millions of her 
treasure ! Nor is there any evidence that, as human nature 
is, the problem could have been solved at a less cost either of 
blood or treasure. 

Let us not imagine that we are exempt from a law of na- 
tional progress to which all the past has been subjected. Wf 
have incorporated in our constitution a new and an exceed- 
ingly important invention in the science of government. We 
may not expect to render it available for the benefit of man- 
kind till it shall have been subjected to the ordeal of bloody 
conflict. A portion of our people are tired of the contract. 
They Avish to escape from the Union which our fathers formed. 



15 

This, say they, is not a national government, it is a confed- 
eration, and will the administration attempt to "coerce" 
a sovereign State % And the idea of a national government 
of limited powers has no firm hold of any portion of the 
national mind ; it has not yet been subjected to the ordeal 
of the sword; it has not yet been written in blood. And 
the bloody handwriting of the sword is to nations the only 
intelligible writing. The word " coercion " had well nigh 
frightened the nation from its propriety. It was because we 
did not, and, according to the laws of the human mind, as a 
nation, we could not half understand this grand peculiarity of 
our constitution. 

It is wonderful to observe that the profound De Tocqueville 
himself, after having stated the case so clearly in the extract 
we have made, falls, in the subsequent part of his work, into 
the very same error. He says : 

"However strong a government may be, it cannot escape from the consequences 
of a principle which it has once admitted as the foundation of its constitution. The 
Union was formed by the voluntary agreetnent of the states ; and in uniting 
together they have not forfeited their nationality, nor have they been reduced to 
the condition of one and the same people. If one of the states chose to with- 
draw its name from the contract it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing 
so ; and the Federal Government would have no means of maintaining its claims 
directly either by force or right." p. 367. 

Again : 

" It appears to me unquestionable that if any portion of the Union seriously 
desired to separate itself from the other states, they would not be able, nor in- 
deed would they attempt to prevent it, and the present Union will only last as 
long as the states which compose it choose to continue members of the confedera- 
tion." p. 369. 

This is South Carolina logic ; this is the logic to which the 
partisan watch-cry of " coercion " was addressed — this, too, 
from a profound philosopher who had previously analyzed the 
constitution with great discrimination and accuracy, and shown 
that within the limits of those interests which are committed 
to it, our government is as truly and completely national as 
that of France under Napoleon III, and has just as good, 
exclusive, and perfect a right to collect imposts in the port of 
Charleston, as the government of England has to collect them 



16 

in the port of Liverpool ; and the people have just as much 
right to cry "coercion" in the one case as in the other. This 
writer shows that carefully as he has pointed out the inaccu- 
racy of the words Federal and Confederation, when applied to 
our government, these words have still overmastered him, and 
led his thoughts far away from that great invention in the 
science of government, for which he has elsewhere given the 
frauiers of the constitution ample credit. Even the philoso- 
phers are like the rest of us common mortals ; they cannot per- 
sistently see a political truth till it has been established by con- 
flict and written in blood. 

And so it is with the philosophers and with the unlearned, 
with foreigners and with ourselves, with the South and with 
the North ; it will never be clearly seen and felt in the depths 
of men's souls that a government of limited powers can exert 
those powers in presence of and in opposition to those states 
from which it originally received them by voluntary cession, 
till it has been proved by fierce and bloody conflict. Till our 
general government has asserted those powers in the face of 
opposition, and shown its strength by overcoming resistance 
and trampling out rebellion, it will, as human nature is, almost 
necessarily be regarded as weak and helpless, dependent on the 
capricious will of thirty-four sovereign states, and existing for 
a twelve month only by their sufferance. 

Awhile our general government continued to occupy such a 
position, it could not be much respected either at home or 
abroad. It is for this same reason that England cannot under- 
stand us at the present moment, and displays in speaking of 
our present crisis an ignorance, which alternately provokes our 
contempt and our anger. It were best that we spare both, and 
teach her by deeds that Ave are not a mere confederation but a 
nation, and that it is as absurd for her to talk of " strict neu- 
trality" and the "rights of belligerents" in the present con- 
test, as for us to use similar language in a conflict between her 
and her Irish, Canadian, or Indian subjects. I say we must 
teacli her by deeds / for deeds are the only sort of instruction 
which the nature of the case admits of, or which can be 
effectual. 



17 

And by deeds, too, we must instruct ourselves and our own 
people. Such a national experience as that out of which we 
have lately come, such a national nightmare, as that from which 
the booming of Sumpter's cannon was hardly able to awaken 
us, was only possible in such a dim twilight of some great 
fundamental political truth, as exists before it has received the 
sanction of trial by deadly conflict. The giant frauds on our 
national treasury, the astounding acts of treason committed by 
many of the highest functionaries of our government, both 
civil and military, and the still more astounding toleration 
with which we, the people, endured it all, would have been im- 
possible but for this dim and inadequate perception of this 
fundamental principle of our government. And this dimness of 
vision was nearly universal. Few of us saw with any clear- 
ness and vividness of perception, that we have a supreme gov- 
ernment at Washington. And if we have not a supreme gov- 
ernment at "Washington, then, certainly, nowhere ; for our 
state governments do not profess to be supreme ; they are not 
such either in theory or in practice. The only effect, then, of 
such a state of things has been to attack and destroy the very 
principle of loyalty itself ; to set up what claims to be a govern- 
ment, as an object of pity and contempt — a government which 
could not protect good men, and on which bad men could 
trample with impunity. It has been perfectly notorious for 
many years, that in large districts of our country the govern- 
ment could not protect the rights of innocent and unoffending 
citizens ; it could not enforce its own laws ; it could not main- 
tain the inviolability of its own mails. In such a state of 
things it need not be thought strange that the principle of 
loyalty declined, and that reverence for the government itself 
was fast fading out of the national mind: such a result was 
partly a necessity of our national history. 

If these things are so, our present national crisis has not 
come a moment too soon ; and we can well afford to meet it 
at the sacrifice, of no matter how many human lives, and how 
many millions of treasure. Such a crisis we must meet, and 
meet soon, or be utterly ruined by our growing disloyalty, and 
the vices without number which inevitably spring from it. 

2 



18 

And we may well hope that it will furnish the very discipline 
we need. It is to be hoped that we and the world shall find 
that we have a real government, that there is a power in and 
over this nation, mild and benignant indeed, but yet a power, 
which can demand and enforce obedience over every foot of its 
domain; a power which can overcome resistance, which can 
trample out even a gigantic rebellion, and make itself felt, 
feared and honored ; a power which can in all parts of this 
land hold a shield of resistless protection over its friends, and 
crush its enemies in the dust as easily as one can set his foot 
on an offensive worm. Such a discipline we certainly do 
need, and must have, or become the vilest of nations. It will 
unspeakably bless us : it will make us far more united, homo- 
geneous and capable of virtue at home ; and far more loved 
and honored abroad. The children of an ungovemed family 
are always objects of dread and aversion to all their neighbors. 
Just so the people of an ungoverned or an ill-governed nation 
are always abhorred by the rest of mankind. It is to be 
hoped we may come out of this great national trial, chastened 
in spirit, subdued not to traitors or foes, but to authority and 
rightful government : a people able to live together in har- 
mony and to render ourselves beloved and honored by all 
mankind. 

4. There is yet one more vice of our national character, 
perhaps even more deep and dangerous than those hitherto 
spoken of, which we hope our present national crisis may tend 
to eradicate. I have been speaking of want of loyalty to the 
government under which we live : I now refer to want of 
loyalty to right, to changeless eternal justice. As a people, a 
nation, we have been unmindful of the great truth, that there 
are principles of right, whiih limit and sustain all human, all 
created, all existing power; principles which God himself 
never infringes, and will never suffer to be infringed by any 
combinations of created power. We have imagined that dem- 
ocratic majorities may do whatever they please, and especially 
that an ocean-girt republic, like ours, is strong enough to do all 
its pleasure ; that the will of such a people is omnipotent. The 
public mind has been extensively pervaded with the idea, that to 



19 

oppose moral convictions to the legal expressions of such a na- 
tional will is fanaticism to be discountenanced by the people's 
contempt and scorn, if not to be punished by the judges. In 
our own times and before our own eyes men of the purest char- 
acter and the highest standing have been made a hissing and 
a by-word for maintaining, that there are laws of justice and 
laws of God, which are above all human constitutions and 
enactments, and which as truly limit the power of popular ma- 
jorities however numerous, as of crowned despots. 

And yet there are such changeless laws of God, and neither 
individuals nor nations can ever for one moment escape from 
them. God has hedged about every creature he has made 
with rights, principles of justice, which he will never permit 
any earthly power great or small to trample on ; and the in- 
dividual or the nation that does trample on them will meet 
God as an avenger. And great and small are both alike to 
him ; it is just as easy for him to punish the mightiest human 
power that ever existed, as the feeblest insect ; he can crush 
a nation as easily as a man or a worm. If a nation, however 
mighty, adopts either laws or customs, by which unnecessary 
cruelty is inflicted on a tribe of brute animals, the displeasure of 
God is sure to follow. The cruelty of Rome to the wild beasts 
which she tortured in her amphitheater, for the amusement of 
her populace and her fashion, was not the least of the causes of 
her decay and her overthow. Still more will this law hold, if 
we perpetrate any injustice on a fellow-man, however low in 
the scale of humanity. The victim may be the red man of the 
wilderness, or the tawny African. He that cares for the beasts 
of the field, and the fowls of the air, will still more care for the 
humblest in human form. "We may rest assured that great as 
we are, vast as is our national domain, the law's of our nation- 
al prosperity, and of all national prosperity, are such that 
neither we, nor any other nation,can permanently prosper 
while s3 T stematic and legalized injustice is practiced towards 
any creature that 1 tears the image of God. It is as much a 
law of nature and of nature's God, that such legalized injustice 
will result ere long in convulsion and revolution, as that a 
heavy body unsupported will fall. 



20 

In the earthquake which is now shaking this nation, God is 
teaching us, and I hope a great nation will learn the lesson, 
that the principles of eternal justice are stronger than popular 
majorities, however vast and terrific: that the Almighty is 
always on the side of those principles ; and that he will 
never be at a loss fur ways of making them respected and 
honored. "We are finding that he is stronger than popular 
majorities, stronger than navies and armies, however numer- 
ous and brave and well appointed, stronger than the North, 
and stronger than the South. He is teaching us that on that 
particular question out of which this convulsion has come, it 
is high time that all men of all parties, and all sections, should 
throw all questions of expediency and immediate advantage 
into the back-ground, and that reverentially, and in the fear 
of God's righteous judgments, we should adjust even that 
question on principles of everlasting justice, — justice to the 
white man, and justice to the black man, justice to the master, 
justice to the slave, justice to all men. 

It can avail little now to ask what will the South demand, 
and what will the North concede. Any adjustment on such 
principles will be delusive and transient, and lead in the 
future to other and still more terrible convulsions. God made 
the African, and gave him his rights, whatever it may appear 
that they are, greater or less, and those rights the nation must 
respect and defend, or there is no future for us, but one of dis- 
ruption, convulsion, anarchy and ruin. 

In this spirit must we learn to treat every question affect- 
ing the rights either of individuals or classes. It is to a free 
nation, and a free nation only that God has given North 
America in possession. And a free nation is not one in which 
the majority rules and may do what it pleases, and all it 
pleases, but one in which justice is done to every man, and 
if possible to every brute and every insect. If our nation is 
ever again to be peaceful and prosperous, if it is to go on and 
fulfil its great destiny, if every spot on which the soles of our 
feet tread from ocean to ocean is to be ours, we must become 
such a free nation. Our freedom must rest on the everlasting 
foundations of justice — justice to men of all colors and con- 



21 

ditions, justice to the rich and justice to the poor, justice to 
the weak and justice to the strong. I seem to hear the awful 
voice of the great Jehovah speaking out of the tempest which 
is hanging over us and saying : " What doth the Lord thy God 
require of thee, but to do justly, love mercy, and walk hum- 
bly with thy God ?" Then, and then only shall we have 
peace — peace as permanent as our mountains and as abundant 
as our rivers. 

I crave your pardon for detaining you so long. I could not 
help it. My heart is full of this theme — too full for utterance. 
I do most earnestly commend it to the solemn consideration of 
this multitudinous family, the Alumni of Yale. I reverently 
commend it to our Alma Mater herself. May the long suc- 
cession of her sons in coming generations and ages, add to the 
wealth of their learning, and the elegance of their culture, a 
wise, earnest, religious patriotism. May they ever be taught 
to love their country for its freedom, for its efficient and 
successful protection of all the rights of all the dwellers on its 
soil. 

As I stand here to-day and cast my eye down the stream of 
our national future, what is it which I behold. A victorious 
and domineering North, holding in forced and unwilling sub- 
mission a conquered and subjugated South ? Nay, down with 
that hideous and shocking vision — a vision fitted to the past 
ages of the world's darkness and barbarism, but not to the 
bright millennial future. It is a vision of beauty, and glory, 
and blessedness which rises before me, the blessed spirit of 
loyalty enthroned, as never before, in the hearts of this great 
continental people ; the relation of the white man, the heaven 
appointed lord of our soil, to the African, hewer of our wood 
and drawer of our water, adjusted on principles of equity and 
mercy to both ; the people of States now alienated, embittered, 
and in rebellion, beholding the flag of our American Union 
with all its glorious associations of freedom again waving over 
them with a joy too deep and heartfelt for any other utteranee 
than that of tears ; and a regenerated nation moving on in 
sublime majesty to take possession of a continent in the name 
of freedom, of justice, and of God. 



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